Lyme-Old Lyme Public Schools students all had computers or tablets in hand and reliable internet connectivity assured when the district rolled out its distance learning program on March 23, about a week after Gov. Ned Lamont officially ordered all schools shut in an effort to stem the rising tide of COVID-19 cases sweeping across the state.

Two weeks later in New London, however, about 100 students remained without any of the technology needed to transition to learning from home. Schools Superintendent Cynthia Ritchie told an interviewer on the city’s podcast on April 1 that the most frequent questions being asked by New London parents during the early stages of the forced school shutdown focused on how and where to access food for their children. At the same time in Norwich, school officials were working to provide 670 students not proficient in English, with lessons they could adequately understand.

Teachers and school officials deserve much credit for the monumental task they have achieved in transitioning from in-person to at-home learning to date. The learn-from-home transition had to be accomplished quickly and under duress. Teachers were forced to immediately learn a myriad of new technology and effectively translate face-to-face classroom engagement skills to the small screen. All of it needed to be rolled out as both learners and teachers dealt with the emotional realities of the threat of serious illness and social isolation.

Despite the progress now made, however, the coronavirus has laid bare the vast socio-economic divides among students and threatens to widen the long-standing Connecticut achievement gap. While the achievement gap separating the state’s wealthier students from their poorer peers has long been documented, and education equality for all students has been fought for in several high-profile court cases, it has stubbornly persisted. The coronavirus crisis makes the outlook grimmer, but it should also double the resolve to correct this unacceptable status quo so that all children can reach their full potential.

For school officials and teachers still settling into the abrupt transition to online learning, the tasks ahead may be even more daunting. Faced with the likelihood students will be away from classrooms for a third of the current school year, along with the possibility that even the fall will not bring a return to entirely normal conditions, officials must start now to try to prevent a widening and deepening achievement gap between better prepared and technologically connected students, who can adapt reasonably quickly to online learning, and those now isolated in homes where the struggles of daily life predominate.

School officials, school boards and teachers must be creative, nimble, flexible and innovative in seeking ways to achieve equitable education for all students in this uncharted territory of 100 percent distance learning and at a time when municipal and state budgets could be stretched well beyond breaking points by pandemic-induced declines in tax revenue.

This should include the need for more flexible teaching schedules and more intensive summer programming, if the health risks allow. Officials must begin working now to find ways to make up lost classroom time that is hurting students already most at-risk so much more than children whose homes can accommodate dedicated quiet study spaces and whose parents are not distracted by the threat of impending financial devastation.

Even as officials in the poorest school districts across the state still await the completion of delivery of 60,000 laptops for high school students donated by the Partnership for Connecticut, they must also virtually gather school board members and teachers union representatives to immediately brainstorm how best to ensure that whenever students do return to their regular classrooms, they do not face months of catch-up learning. All the state’s children deserve nothing less.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.